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The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Muriel Barbery
Europa Editions
September 2008
On Sale: September 2, 2008
336 pages
ISBN: 1933372605
EAN: 9781933372600
Paperback
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Non-Fiction
The enthralling international bestseller. We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment
building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée, the
concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of
her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every
stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to
television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renée is a
cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and
Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she
scrutinizes the lives of the building’s tenants, who for
their part are barely aware of her existence. Then there’s Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the
daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and
startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on
the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then
she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to
behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture,
a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if
obstinate daughter. Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their
finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will
not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when
a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building.
Only he is able to gain Paloma’s trust and to see through
Renée’s timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her.
This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the
quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.
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